Development of physical employment standards of specialist paramedic roles in the National Ambulance Resilience Unit (Naru)

2021 ◽  
Vol 95 ◽  
pp. 103460
Author(s):  
Andrew G. Siddall ◽  
Mark P. Rayson ◽  
Ella F. Walker ◽  
Julianne Doherty ◽  
Josh I. Osofa ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Employment Standards

Domestic workers’ lived realities of empowerment and disempowerment within the South African labour legislative context: Two sides of the same “coin”

2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 64-83
Author(s):  
Christel Marais ◽  
Christo Van Wyk
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Phenomenological Research ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Employment Relationship ◽  
Employee Voice ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Employment Standards ◽  
Phenomenological Research Design ◽  
Two Sides ◽  
Elusive Concept

South Africa is heralded as a global ambassador for the rights of domestic workers. Empowerment, however, remains an elusive concept within the sector. Fear-based disempowerment still characterises the employment relationship, resulting in an absence of an employee voice. The dire need to survive renders this sector silent. This article explores the role that legislative awareness can play in the everyday lives of domestic workers. By means of a post-positive, forwardlooking positive psychological and phenomenological research design the researchers sought to access the voiced experiences of domestic workers within their employment context. Consequently, purposive, respondent-driven selfsampling knowledgeable participants were recruited. In-depth interviewing generated the data. The distinct voice of each participant was noted during an open inductive approach to data analysis. Findings indicated that empowerment was an unknown construct for all participants. They lacked the confidence to engage their employers on employment issues. Nevertheless, domestic workers should embrace ownership and endeavour to empower themselves. This would sanction their right to assert their expectations of employment standards with confidence and use the judicial system to bring about compliant actions. The article concludes with the notion that legislative awareness could result in empowered actions though informed employee voices.

Dealing with ‘vulnerable workers’ in precarious employment: Front-line constraints and strategies in employment standards enforcement

2020 ◽  
pp. 0143831X2090914
Author(s):  
Alan Hall ◽  
Rebecca Hall ◽  
Nicole Bernhardt
Keyword(s):  
Labour Market ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Front Line ◽  
Canadian Province ◽  
Precarious Employment ◽  
Employment Relationships ◽  
The Core ◽  
Worker Characteristics ◽  
Employment Standards ◽  
Vulnerable Workers

Individual worker complaints continue to be the core foundation of employment standards enforcement in many Western jurisdictions, including the Canadian province of Ontario. In the contemporary labour market context where segments of the labour force may be disproportionately impacted by rights violations, and employment relationships are more diverse and often more tenuous than previously, the continued reliance on individual claims suggests a need to better understand the challenges associated with the investigation and resolution of claims involving ‘vulnerable workers’ in precarious employment situations. Using interviews with front-line Ontario employment standards officers (ESOs), this article examines the extent to which certain worker characteristics and employment situations perceived by officers as ‘vulnerable’ are identified by officers as significant constraints or barriers to investigation processes and outcomes, and documents whether and how officers address these constraints and barriers. The analysis also identifies the perceived influence of policy, resource and legislative requirements in shaping how officers deal with the more difficult and challenging cases, while also considering the extent to which the officers’ actions are understood by them as discretionary and guided by their particular orientations or concerns. In so doing, this article reveals challenges to the resolution of claims in precarious employment situations, the very place where employment standards are often most needed.

Flexible Work, Temporal Disruption and Implications for Health Practices: An Australian Qualitative Study

2020 ◽  
pp. 095001702095475
Author(s):  
Ginny M Sargent ◽  
Julia McQuoid ◽  
Jane Dixon ◽  
Cathy Banwell ◽  
Lyndall Strazdins
Keyword(s):  
Health Improvement ◽  
Health Practices ◽  
Flexible Work ◽  
Physically Active ◽  
Personal Lives ◽  
Social Theories ◽  
Employment Standards ◽  
Temporal Predictability ◽  
Health Promoting

Flexible work provisions are justified as enabling workers to manage their personal lives, including their health, around work. This study deploys social theories of practice to investigate how the temporal characteristics of flexible work can produce, alter and disrupt the health improvement efforts of workers, concentrating on healthy eating and keeping physically active. Drawing from in-depth interviews with 12 Australian workers, the study explores the temporal mechanisms linking flexible work to health practices, focusing on routines, rhythms and rituals (the three Rs). This research finds that work-time arrangements can provide the temporal scaffolding necessary for health practices (through routines, rhythms and rituals), but only when there is day-to-day, mid-term, and long-term work predictability. Australia’s flexible work policies do not provide this requisite temporal predictability. Health promoting employment provisions would have to reinstate employment standards from the 1970s, providing the desired predictability for flexible provisions to benefit workers.

It Takes a Village: Civil Society Regulation of Employment Standards for Temporary Migrant Workers in Australian Horticulture

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Clibborn
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Farm Workers ◽  
System Level ◽  
Temporary Migrant ◽  
Employment Standards ◽  
State Employment ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Migrant Farm

How can civil society actors address regulatory deficiencies in complex systems? The challenge of regulating employment standards in non-unionised industries is shared by many developed countries. In industries like horticulture, violation of minimum employment standards for vulnerable temporary migrant workers is widespread and state employment regulators struggle to enforce laws. This article examines the challenge at a system level incorporating a range of civil society stakeholders. It conceptualises a regional town and its surrounding horticulture-dependent economy and society as a complex system in which stakeholders face the challenge of reputational damage among temporary migrant farm workers, threatening future labour supply. This ‘tragedy of the commons’ was created by some stakeholders acting solely in their individual interests by underpaying and otherwise mistreating the workers. Using a qualitative approach including 30 interviews, focusing on a single farming region in Queensland, Australia, this article identifies the conditions in which civil society stakeholders in a horticulture system regulate employment standards through orienting and connecting with one another to advance both individual and shared interests.

Exercise and Training in Women, Part I: Influence of Gender on Exercise and Training Responses

2000 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roy J. Shephard
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Core Body Temperature ◽  
Maternal Blood ◽  
Employment Standards ◽  
Exercise Induced ◽  
Hormonal Milieu ◽  
Core Body ◽  
Exercise And Training ◽  
And Training ◽  
Average Woman

Exercise and training responses in women are briefly reviewed. Part I of the paper considers the influence of gender on such responses. The average woman has a smaller inherent aerobic power and less muscular strength than a man, reflecting sociocultural influences, physical size, body composition, and hormonal milieu. Nevertheless, the best-trained women can out-perform sedentary men. The handicap of the average woman is offset by a lighter body mass and a tendency to metabolize fat rather than carbohydrate during exercise. A lack of anabolic hormones may limit training increases of muscle bulk in the female. A low initial fitness may enhance the scope for training tolerance, but it also limits tolerance of conditioning. Nevertheless, women seem less vulnerable than men to exercise-induced sudden death and overtraining. Part II of the review considers the influence of the menstrual cycle and pregnancy upon exercise and training responses. Physical activity programmes for young women should take account of possible pregnancy. Potential dangers to the foetus include an excessive rise of core body temperature, a decrease of maternal blood sugar, and foetal hypoxia. Nevertheless, regular moderate exercise generally has a favourable impact upon pregnancy outcomes. Key Words: sex differences, sociocultural issues, biological differences, physical activity, conditioning, menstruation, pregnancy, employment standards

scholarly journals Load carriage, human performance, and employment standards

2016 ◽  
Vol 41 (6 (Suppl. 2)) ◽  
pp. S131-S147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nigel A.S. Taylor ◽  
Gregory E. Peoples ◽  
Stewart R. Petersen
Keyword(s):  
Work Performance ◽  
Human Performance ◽  
Performance Testing ◽  
The Body ◽  
Load Carriage ◽  
Physical Endurance ◽  
Physiological Strain ◽  
Employment Standards ◽  
Heavy Loads ◽  
External Loads

The focus of this review is on the physiological considerations necessary for developing employment standards within occupations that have a heavy reliance on load carriage. Employees within military, fire fighting, law enforcement, and search and rescue occupations regularly work with heavy loads. For example, soldiers often carry loads >50 kg, whilst structural firefighters wear 20–25 kg of protective clothing and equipment, in addition to carrying external loads. It has long been known that heavy loads modify gait, mobility, metabolic rate, and efficiency, while concurrently elevating the risk of muscle fatigue and injury. In addition, load carriage often occurs within environmentally stressful conditions, with protective ensembles adding to the thermal burden of the workplace. Indeed, physiological strain relates not just to the mass and dimensions of carried objects, but to how those loads are positioned on and around the body. Yet heavy loads must be borne by men and women of varying body size, and with the expectation that operational capability will not be impinged. This presents a recruitment conundrum. How do employers identify capable and injury-resistant individuals while simultaneously avoiding discriminatory selection practices? In this communication, the relevant metabolic, cardiopulmonary, and thermoregulatory consequences of loaded work are reviewed, along with concomitant impediments to physical endurance and mobility. Also emphasised is the importance of including occupation-specific clothing, protective equipment, and loads during work-performance testing. Finally, recommendations are presented for how to address these issues when evaluating readiness for duty.

scholarly journals Taking Workers’ Rights Seriously: Private Prosecutions of Employment Standards Violations

2008 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 330
Author(s):  
Kent Elson
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Proceedings ◽  
Il Y A ◽  
Employment Standards ◽  
Private Actors ◽  
Vulnerable Workers

This paper examines private prosecutions as a tool to challenge the state’s inadequate enforcement of employment standards. In Ontario, poor enforcement of employment standards means that there are no costs for non-compliance, that orders to pay wages are typically not fully paid and that vulnerable workers are left unprotected. Private prosecutions are one tool that could be used by private actors to fight these problems. Historically, private prosecutions have been used where there is a gap in government enforcement, most recently to bring environmental offenders to justice. Privately prosecuting employment standards violations would continue that tradition and would promote compliance through the stigma of criminal proceedings, and by conveying the message that employment standards violations are crimes. This paper discusses the gaps in the enforcement of employment standards in Ontario (section II), explains how private prosecutions can help and how this fits with the historic use of private prosecutions (section III), and describes how private prosecutions of employment standards could be easily implemented (section IV).Cet article examine la question de poursuites privées comme outil pour contester la mise en application inadéquate des normes d’emploi par l’état. En Ontario, les faiblesses dans la mise en application des normes d’emploi font que leur inobservation n’entraîne aucuns coûts, que, typiquement, les ordonnances de payer des gages ne sont pas totalement observées et que les travailleurs vulnérables demeurent sans protection. Les poursuites privées sont un outil que pourraient utiliser des acteurs privés pour combattre ces problèmes. Historiquement, on a utilisé les poursuites privées où il y a lacune dans la mise en application de lois par le gouvernement, le plus récemment pour traduire en justice les contrevenants par rapport à l’environnement. Les poursuites privées en cas d’infractions contre les normes d’emploi continueraient cette tradition et favoriseraient l’observation des lois par la stigmatisation associée aux instances criminelles et en communiquant le message que les infractions contre les normes d’emploi sont des crimes. Cet article discute les lacunes dans la mise en application des normes d’emploi en Ontario (section II), explique la façon dont les poursuites privées peuvent aider et comment cela cadre avec leur utilisation historique (section III), et décrit comment on pourrait facilement mettre en pratique les poursuites privées pour infractions des normes d’emploi (section IV).

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